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Spamming ESPs: the followup
Campaign Monitor contacted me about yesterday’s post. The phrasing I picked out of the spammers AUP matched their AUP quite closely. In fact, if you plug the AUP into Google, Campaign Monitor comes up as one of the first hits.
It was not Campaign Monitor I was talking about. In fact, the ESP I received the mail from is not on the first 8 pages of Google hits for the phrases I posted.
A similar thing happened when I posted about Dell spamming me. Dell has multiple ESPs, and one of their ESPs contacted me directly in case they were the ones Dell was spamming through. It was no surprise to me that they weren’t the ESP involved.
This is what good ESPs do. Good ESPs monitor their reputation and monitor what people are saying about them. Good ESPs notice when people claim they’re being spammed and effectively reach out to the complainers so they can investigate the claim.
Good ESPs don’t just rely on the complaint numbers to take action. They keep an eye out on social networks to see who might be receiving mail they never asked for.
[…] EDIT: Make sure to read the followup […]
Thank you so much for this super-fast followup, Laura. It’s very unfortunate that there are folks in our industry who seem to have no problem publishing an anti-spam policy (or in this case, copying ours verbatim), then breaking every rule themselves. Thankfully, most of us are doing our best to raise email marketing’s reputation as an effective, permission-based medium and generally doing well for it, despite these guys!
All of us here really appreciate your support here, so many thanks again. Have a great Christmas ahead! 😀
There is a significant difference between publishing an anti-spam policy and actually enforcing it.
A company that I had been litigating with has a policy against spam, which includes the ability to terminate the affiliate, to forfeit commissions, and for indemnification. Their attorney admitted that they never refuse to pay the commission to affiliates that spam and demanded indemnification.
An policy against spamming is only effective if it is enforced and people are aware that it is enforced.